Looks good, but is a little noisy

By Kevin Mio, The Gazette

Originally published: December 11, 2012

The Kia Forte was one of the carmaker’s first vehicles to embody the new design language instituted by Peter Schreyer; one that has given the brand one of the nicest lineups around.

The Forte comes in three different body styles, each of which has its own appeal.

The lineup includes a four-door sedan and a five-door hatchback (known as the Forte5). Sandwiched between them is the Forte Koup, a two-door coupe I tested recently. While the vehicle I tested was a 2012 model, 2013s are already on sale.

The 2012 Forte Koup EX starts at $18,995, the SX goes for $22,295 and the SX Luxury starts at $24,595. Another $1,455 gets added to each model for delivery.

The tester was equipped with the optional six-speed automatic ($1,400) and an extra charge of $150 for the silver paint job, with a final as-tested price of $27,700.

The Forte Koup I drove around for the week was equipped with Kia’s R package. What that does is add on front skirts ($473.83), side skirts ($473.83), a rear spoiler ($450.45), an R badge ($30.25) and R door sill plates ($94.95). Other optional gear included a performance air filter ($51.48) and performance exhaust ($574.65).

So let’s get the negative out of the way. To be quite honest, I think the Forte Koup looks better without the R package’s skirts, which looked out of place. Secondly, the performance exhaust was more what I would call an annoying exhaust because of the drone it produced. Don’t get me wrong, I love a nice exhaust note, but this was not one of them.

I did like the rear spoiler that was added though, so there’s at least that.

Design

I have always liked the Forte’s design, especially the Koup.

The front fascia, with its black insert, has an aggressive and sporty appearance, and the Koup’s body lines further enhance that look.

The design line that runs front to back under the windows gives the Koup a sturdier look – almost like the broader shoulders on bodybuilders.

The exterior look is capped off by nice wheels and dual chrome exhaust tips.

Inside, the passenger compartment is nicely designed. The controls are all nicely laid out on the centre stack, centring around a large dial for the temperature control.

There may be a lot of black, but the red-accent lighting at night – especially the one around the speedometer – quickly makes you forget about it all.

The tester had comfortable – and heated – leather seats.

Other than a drawback I will mention later on, I really had no qualms about the Koup’s interior.

Performance

The SX Luxury (and the SX) gets the larger of the two available engines for the Forte Koup, a 2.4-litre inline four-cylinder power plant. Its output is rated at 173 horsepower and 168 foot-pounds of torque, and comes standard with a six-speed manual transmission.

While it strikes me that the Forte Koup would be lots of fun with the manual shifter, the six-speed automatic transmission isn’t bad at all.

It does an excellent job of moving through the gears so power is readily available, and drops down in a hurry when acceleration is called for while passing on the highway.

Fuel efficiency for the Forte Koup with the automatic is estimated at 9.0 litres per 100 kilometres in the city and 6.4 L/100 km on the highway. My testing revealed an actual figure of 9.8 L/100 km of mostly highway driving.

Driving/utility

The first thing I noticed in the Forte Koup – after the exhaust note – was the amount of rattles in the cabin, something that was also noticed by my passengers during the week.

With less than 6,000 kilometres under its belt, this should not have been happening. I am not sure if it was because of all the R package tweaking, but it was more than a little unpleasant.

Then again, crank up the six-speaker sound system and those noises fade away.

Getting into the back seat is a not overly taxing, even if I did jam my wrist trying to get out of there after snapping some pictures. That probably has more to do with me than the car design.

The trunk offers 12.6 cubic feet of cargo space, which is a good size.